I skimmed through a documentary on Haruki Murakami and the narrator said something along the lines of, "something in your brain changes when you read your first Murakami novel". I enthusiastically agree. I've read 4 of his novels in the past 2 months or so and I can't get enough - I unashamedly scoured the New York Public Library catalog and placed holds on the rest of his works.
He is aesthetically the best modern writer in our world. Ugh so good: his concise, subtlety eerie, and detached style combined with ever-present existentialist themes. His novels make me want to learn Japanese to fluency, so I can reread them in their original expression. He approaches his native culture with such reverence that I want to visit Japan again and explore the country with a different perspective (read: non-dumb-dumb-tourist).
I could do without the weird sexual references, for sure. Other than that, he blows my mind.
